The British economy’s relative decline has been highlighted by a sequence of events that will be seen as historically important. The financial crisis laid to rest our notion that it was sufficient to build a national plan on a burgeoning City of London. The referendum on Brexit told us that openness to European trade and migration alone did not allow our economic structures to deliver sustained increases in prosperity across the country. Life under the pandemic has further exposed the need to redevelop our public provision of health, social care and transport infrastructure, as well as a reconsideration of the revenues to finance that. While it is not the duty of the state to replace private sector activity and impinge on its plans unduly with taxes, the state (local and national) does have the obligation to support and  enable the private sector to generate jobs and prosperity across the nation, as well as provide public goods. In those  obligations it has repeatedly failed.